The page boys

From the ashes the phoenix shall arise. From the faded glory that was Rome, the Byzantine Empire; from the smouldering devastation of the Great Fire, the domed and steepled City of Sir Christopher Wren; and from the demise of a failed, forgotten enterprise called Avenues, a flourishing local monthly publication: The Richmond Magazine.

It’s 20 years now since it appeared; 20 years since the slimline launch issue dropped nervously onto the first unsuspecting mat. March 1998: that strange lost world in which Tony Blair still walked on water, tweeting was for the birds and the ghost of the dead Diana loitered palely at the national shrine. Oh, and England – beyond a shadow of doubt – were going to win that summer’s World Cup.

At home, two gentlemen of this parish – Con Crowley, a Kew-bred journalist with a long track record in local publishing who had edited the Kingston Guardian at the age of 25, and Alex Whitney, sometime estate agent turned sales executive from Sheen – seized a golden opportunity to surf the tranquil 90s wave. When the new owner of Avenues – a cash-guzzling South-West London publication for which Con and Alex both worked – decided that it was surplus to requirement, the enterprising duo stepped up. Why not rescue it from the scrap heap, focus it exclusively on Richmond borough and rebrand it as The Richmond Magazine?

“Nothing at that time was really tapping into the name and cachet of Richmond,” recalls Con. “The coffee table titles didn’t relate so closely to local areas back then. Yet here we had the chance to do something in a place like no other. It had the beauty, the cultural richness and a wonderful community too. Richmond is unique – not just in London, but in the UK and perhaps even the world.”

Alex’s motives were rather more pragmatic.

“I didn’t have any other options,” he admits candidly. “I just thought: ‘We know all the advertisers, we don’t have jobs – let’s try it!’”

So they did, pitching camp at Alex’s flat in Sheen Gate Gardens, near Richmond Park, from which the company name of Sheengate Publishing derives. The inventory of assets was distinctly unpromising: one Apple Mac, one sales exec, a young freelance writer sufficiently unhinged to accept almost any old gig (moi) and a fax machine that only worked when we unplugged the phone. News International this was not.

“I remember running to the bank with our first client cheque,” says Alex. “We’d gone right out on our own, so we absolutely had to make money. On the first issue the pages got stuck on the Mac – it was all Zip drives in those days. It looked bleak, but Con said: ‘I’ve got 10 grand’s worth of investment on there and I’m not losing it.’ We ended up driving to the printers with the whole computer in the car.”

And the age of austerity wasn’t about to end any time soon.

“After a bit Con said that he’d found us an office in Kew. When we got there, it turned out to be a windowless basement right next to a boiler. I said forget it – it must have been 100 degrees down there.”

Instead they decamped to Chessington and the spectacularly misnamed Hi-Tec House: a primitive slice of pseudo-brutalist architecture where, in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, thieves would break in and steal. Thrice the evildoers came back, even attempting to saw through the security bars that had gone up in a desperate bid to stem the outflow of computers. And then, in a further Biblical twist, came the flood. The roof of this improbable ark was no more hi-tec than the rest of it.

“I remember having to put up all these Arabian style tents to cover the damp patches,” says Alex. “It was like working in the middle of Marrakesh.”

And yet, in this decidedly unpromising soil, The Richmond Magazine began to grow. Expectations had been for revenue of no more than £20,000 per issue, but with the big local estate agents on board, that ceiling was shattered within months. And as the tide of prosperity rose, the editorial ship made headway too.

“We’re journalistically, as well as commercially, motivated and we’ve always taken that side of things seriously,” says Con. “We want to provide something interesting and relevant and we’ve been lucky with the quality of our writers. Some of the content has to be ‘aspirational’, though I hate that word, but I think we’ve always managed to ensure that there is a deeper element too.

“Distribution is the other big key. Most of our 38,000 copies go through letter boxes, covering about 60% of the borough. We’d love to do every house, but we can’t always get into flats and, in any case, the cost would be just too high. We’re absolutely clear, however, that The Richmond Magazine is for the whole community. It’s a badge of residence.”

Success bred success and, in 2004, the company moved back physically into the borough, acquiring its present office in Hampton. Not even the global financial crash, which swept through like a tsunami in 2008 shortly after the magazine’s 10th birthday, could blow the sturdy vessel off course.

“We lost about 30% of our business in a month,” recalls Alex, who is justly proud of the fact that Sheengate Publishing has never borrowed in its life. “But, to me, that was simply getting rid of dead wood – companies that had thrived in a rather foolish economy. The good clients stayed with us, not only because they had to, but also because we were right for their product.

“So I never doubted that we’d get through. If anything, the crash made us more efficient.”

Today the challenges are different: relentless technological innovation threatens constantly to bring print to its knees. Sheengate’s editorial website, essentialsurrey.co.uk – which serves not only Richmond, but also the area of the RM’s sister titles in Surrey and Wandsworth – was launched in 2012 as a kind of Time Out style accompaniment to the publications themselves. But, insists Con, it will never do more than complement the magazine on the mat.

“There will always be a market for printed papers, and the new data protection laws can only serve to reinforce that. People are fed up with being bombarded by unsolicited ads. Computers are so intrusive. I think there’s a real desire to sit and hold a book, or a magazine, and read it in a gentle way.”

So, as its third decade dawns, the outlook for the RM remains bright. And the partnership that spawned it is as solid as ever.

“Con and I have always been chalk and cheese,” reflects Alex. “That’s why we work together so well. Con lets me do things that he wouldn’t have done and vice versa. We don’t always agree, but each of us knows that the other has the good of the company at heart. ”

The winning formula for a cherished and enduring publication. Congratulations, gentlemen, and happy birthday to The Richmond Magazine. It sounds terrific. I must read it some time.

Richard Nye was Editor of The Richmond Magazine from 2007-14

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